The present invention relates to a method for supplementing translation information required in a machine translation between two languages having different linguistics. For example, a method is provided for supplementing translation information which is suitable to supplement information to Japanese text in Japanese-English machine translation, when such the information is not directly expressed in the Japanese text but necessary in the translation process.
The machine translation primarily aims at saving manpower in translation work. A smaller amount of manpower is always required in inputting original text to a computer, and post-editing the output of the translation text. The inputting and the post-editing are usually carried out with a word processor or a terminal device having such a function. Accordingly, we can say that the manpower corresponds to the number of key strokes on the keyboard by an operator.
For example, in a Japanese-English machine translation, there are several kinds of information on Japanese text which is sometimes eliminated from Japanese text which the translation machine will find inconvenient for generating idiomatic English English text. Examples of this are identifying singular or plural forms of a noun, selection of definite or indefinite article and indicating a sex. In the past, these were corrected in the post-editing stage, by hand or in correction on the Japanese text prior to the translation (pre-editing) by adding a suffix or note to instruct the machine that a noun is of plural form. For example, words such as "tachi", "nado" or "-S (fuku)" can be added to Japanese nouns which should be treated as a plural form. In the post-edit correction, if the plural form noun is included in a main clause, not only the correction of the noun to the plural form but also correction on conjugation of the related verb must be made. Usually the minimum correction to a simple sentence at the post-editing requires 10-20 key-strokes and even the supplementing information at the pre-editing requires at least 10 key-strokes.